Dana to invest $44 million at 2 Ontario plants to supply EVs

Parts supplier Dana Inc. plans to invest about $44 million to expand two sites in Ontario as it ups output of thermal management systems used in electric vehicles.

Company and government officials announced the expansion Nov. 16 at the Dana Canada Corp. plant in Cambridge, Ont., which builds battery cooling plates for EVs and hybrids.

The investment will go toward increasing production capacity for the Cambridge plant's battery-cooling technology, as well as toward hiring more personnel at the company’s Oakville Technology Centre. The project is expected to create 105 jobs across the two sites southwest of Toronto.

Antonio Valencia, company president of power technologies and global electrification, said the investment will maintain Ontario as the company’s hub for the technology.

“Dana’s thermal-management expertise has been led from our Technology Centre in Ontario since the 1950s, so it is exciting to witness the continued growth of this important technology in the province,” he said in a release.

Provincial investment attraction agency Invest Ontario will provide the Ohio company that makes drivetrains, electric motors and other auto components with $1.8 million to support the expansion.

The project is the latest in a string of EV supply chain investments in Ontario that total about $20 billion over the past three years.

Ontario Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade Vic Fedeli said the province has been working to secure the investment from Dana for about 18 months.

“We continue to make our position very solid as the end-to-end EV supplier jurisdiction of choice,” he told Automotive News Canada.

With commitments from automakers and battery producers to build EVs and battery cells in Ontario, the province has ensured suppliers such as Dana will have local customers for their components, Fedeli added.

“We’ve done the heavy lift of bringing customers here both in making EVs and in making batteries, and now we’re filling all of the spaces in for that end-to-end supply chain.”

As Dana readies the shovels for its expansion in Cambridge, Fedeli anticipates more automotive spending to fall into place across Ontario.

“We’ve got a lot of ink coming down on contracts for components. Some investments will be about this size, and some investments are 10 times the size of this.”

He predicts Ontario will cross the $21-billion auto investment mark in January.